1 Corinthians 4:1-5

December 3, 2017

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

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The sermon starts at 15:55 in the audio file.

Or, How to Evaluate Gospel Preachers

There are a lot of preachers in the world. Maybe the percentage of preachers in the general population isn’t that high, but even in our neck of the liberal woods, there are numerous churches, Christian congregations, and there’s usually at least one preacher in each place. How do you know what makes a good one? Who’s job is it to decide? Is there a website of preacher ratings?

Even the first-generation Christian congregation in Corinth had a wealth of preachers. Though they had started to fight about their favorite, Paul told them: “all are yours.” The believers were God’s temple (3:16), and building a temple usually took hundreds of workers over many years. Paul, Apollos, and Peter were just three of the men who preached a crucified Christ. They built with gold, silver, and precious stones. The Corinthians didn’t need to narrow down who they listened to, they could learn from all of the men who truly preached the gospel.

Listening and learning is good, receiving in thanks is good, but boasting in men was, and still is, prohibited (3:21). The reason, as I said, was because they had been given possession of all the (qualified) preachers.

But which ones were qualified? That is the question Paul answers in 1 Corinthians 4:1-5. There are standards for evaluating preachers that keep us from putting them too high or too low. Here are three aspects of evaluating gospel preachers.

The Criterion of Evaluation (verses 1-2)

Paul already referred to himself and the other preachers as “servants” (3:5) and “fellow-workers” (3:9). Now he adds a couple different but related words and shapes the Corinthians mindset about their ministers. This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. In other words, think about us in these terms, regard or reckon or add up the numbers like this. Make an evaluation of us according to these categories.

Servants (ὑπηρέτης) is a word that meant assistant, with an emphasis on not being the boss. It’s different from doulos, “slave,” but it still doesn’t include liberty to do whatever one wanted. A servant is a subordinate, one who does the will of the master, who in this case is Christ. Stewards (οἰκονόμους) is a great word that often described a servant who managed a household. Joseph worked himself into this sort of position at least twice in Egypt. A steward had responsibility for a variety of tasks (“purchasing, accounts, resource allocation, collection of debts, and general running of the establishment,” Thiselton) but still on behalf of someone else.

Titles such as reverend (as in a person worthy to be revered), cardinal (from “hinge” so a pivotal character), father/pope, are not what Paul had in mind.

In Paul’s case, and in the case of very preacher, he was a steward of the mysteries of God. It could be the word he already used in 2:1, “I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the mystery of God with lofty speech or wisdom.” The mystery was the “secret and hidden wisdom of God” that “none of the rulers of this age understood” (2:7-8). So the mysteries of God are the gospel truths of the glory of a crucified Christ. The mysteries of God are the gospel truths of a world-rejected and yet world-conquering wisdom that reveals the depths of God (2:10). The mysteries of God are the spiritual, and Spirit-revealed and Spirit-discerned truths that demonstrate the power of God.

These are precious truths, like a treasure (see 2 Corinthians 4:7) that God entrusts to men to pass on to others. The steward must answer for what he did with these grand, eternal mysteries. Did he undersell them? Did he feel the need to make them more palatable to the current age? Did he seek man’s admiration more than his master’s approval? A preacher is n[...]